REL T3

By Brent Burmester

June 2008

REL T3 sub-bass speaker. $1299 in black or cherry


REL T3 subwoofer. The driver on the front is a passive radiator, with the smaller woofer underneath the subwoofer. Click for larger image.

It is a great inconvenience that the human ear detects sonic frequencies below 50Hz. If it were not so, there would be no such thing as home theatre. Cars with immense chrome-plated rims would be blinged-out with dozens of tweeters. Most significantly, no one would know the agony that is placing and tuning a subwoofer.

How hard can it be? If you want to know, you’re one of three types. (1) You don’t have a sub; (2) you have a sub, but your system resides in an acoustically perfect space, or (3) you have a sub in an imperfect space, but you’re happy because your chair jumps when the T-Rex goes stomp. For the rest of us, the joy of full-range musical reproduction is tempered by lumpy low-frequency response and unsatisfactory integration with main speakers, the unhappy product of having to listen to audio equipment in a box never meant to be an auditorium.

There are clever and not inexpensive subwoofers that can tune themselves to a system and room, but they can’t walk, so they’ll only make the best of where their owners leave them. Ultimately there is no substitute for careful experimentation with tuning and placement of main speakers, subwoofer, and, of course, the listener, which never really ends. I’ve known experienced audiophiles to prefer different sub settings for every track on an album.

Tiny dancer

So, here is the REL T3, yet another grumbling cube. REL, it must be said, knows about as much about bass reproduction as can be known without recourse to supernatural intervention. Proof lies in the fact the T3 is very, very small, yet claims a roll-off at 30Hz. Built with the robustness of a safe, it isn’t entirely pleasing to the eye – the wood grain finish is okay, but those legs are a bit fourth-form metalwork. To be fair, they serve the utilitarian purpose of lifting the unit the required distance from the floor to pressure-load the 200mm (eight-inch) driver on its underside. The 250mm (ten-inch) diameter grill on the front panel actually obscures a passive cone that resonates so as to augment the driver and deliver that surprising low frequency extension.

REL strongly believes in high-level connection of amp to sub. That is, rather than feed the sub with a line-level signal for amplication by the 200W onboard amp, the manufacturer recommends connecting the speaker terminals on the amp to the T3 by the Neutrik Speakon connector. I concur that this gives faster sound, and one more like that of the main speakers.

Right here, right now

I’ve heard a fair number of subs in my cursed room. They’ve all suffered to a greater or lesser degree, but quality shines through. To my surprise the wee REL didn’t like the spot I normally sit the bass-boxes, including my own Audio-Pro. It wasn’t possible to hear the main speakers and sub as a coherent whole, irrespective of cross-over and volume settings. However, a bit of trial and error with placement led to the discovery of a quite different position nearby, under the arm of a couch, where it played unobtrusively and evenly.

The overall effect was good. Like all RELs the T3 knows how to carry a tune and it gets off the line impressively quickly. Properly located relative to the main speakers and the room boundaries, it passed the most stringent test, that of fading away, leaving higher frequencies properly supported, and giving performers and instruments another layer of corporeality.

What the T3 couldn’t do, however, was shift enough air to bring off the really deep stuff, at least not in the 33 square metres of my living room.. I missed some of the fire and brimstone that larger RELs deliver – a bigger driver backed by more watts in an infinite-baffle enclosure delivers more smack with less overhang.

The low-down

But here’s the thing, the T3 is dinky and cute, and remarkably competent in way that something so dinky and cute has no right to be. For a higher terror-quotient you must pay a good bit more in terms of cash, real-estate, and aesthetics, which is quite unnecessary if terror is not something you often demand from your music.

Who wants one? I’d recommend the T3 to folks who’ve been waiting on the sidelines for a while, unsure if another box is really needed, people with a well-balanced system that sings to their liking and who’d like just a bit more authority, especially during those stirring moments in the programme, without compromising their existing set-up.

For your nearest REL dealer

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